Well, there was that time they and Russia very nearly went to war. Little known in the West, but it may have been the closest we (as a species) have ever gone to a full-scale nuclear war. Be sort of a funny way to end the Cold War. Russia and China nuke each other out of existence as America just watches.

I would say that the economics is the biggest reason why China and the United States won't go to war. The United States and China are too co-dependent on one another economically for there to be a war between the two. China holds a lot of US debt (over $1 trillion, or about 7% of US debt) and they wouldn't want that to be completely erased and China needs the American market to buy their cheap goods. The United States needs China as an investor in its debt for funding and needs cheap Chinese goods to fuel their consumer oriented economy.

I think MAD is not an absolute gaurantee of safety. There can still be naval skirmishes and conventional warfare. Just like we don't use chemical weapons even though we have them, we could have an unspoken agreement to refrain from using nuclear weapons.

He's not a good return investment now. He doesn't have enough good secrets left that would warrant the headache of giving him asylum against the US's wishes. I think the DPRK is the only place that'd be crazy enough to take him now.

North Korea only wants him so they can torture any other secrets he may have out of his ass. And keep him for life, barely breathing just enough to squeeze **** out of him.

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If the person you're seeing ever asks the question "Who is Stan Lee?", promptly kick their ass to the curb.
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Who the **** makes a movie and while planning it is like, "you know what this needs...is some Greg Kinnear."

The point is there's no reason to spy on EVERYONE to stop a relatively small amount of Jihadists. If they want to spy on even one, single American they should require a damn good reason. How about a warrant for every individual case? There's a reason the founders created language to protect all Americans from unnecessary search and seizure.